How to Dress {Pasta}
wrong sauce
right sauce 2
No one in their right mind would ever come to me for advice on how to dress. I work from home, so I more or less live in yoga pants these days (I know, I know).
But when it comes to dressing pasta, I know a thing or two, and I'd like to help you. Here's what I mean: We've come a long way in our understanding and appreciation of Italian cuisine. Most of us know, for example, that there is no "Northern" Italian vs "Southern" Italian, that Italian cooking varies by season, by region and even by town, with tradition and innovation folded in. Names of regional specialties such as agnolotti and corzetti roll off our tongues. We know that pasts should be cooked al dente.
And yet, we still haven't mastered the simple art of saucing it. In recent weeks I've noticed a proliferation of photos of badly dressed, regrettably dressed plates of pasta around the Internet ~ possibly due to the fact that October is National Pasta Month.
Now, I'm pretty easy-going when it comes to cooking (sorta true); I'm all for improvisation and personal style (true). But there are some rules that ought to stand, and this is one of them: A dish of pasta needs to be tossed with, not covered in, sauce. That's why it's called pasta asciutta, which literally means "dry pasta."
Like a good marriage, pasta and sauce have a collaborative relationship. One shouldn't be allowed to smother the other. If you dump sauce over undressed pasta (first pic), you are not giving the noodles a chance to mingle with the sauce and absorb its flavor. The two components, pasta and sauce, never become the beautiful, unified dish they were intended to be (second pic).
To dress your pasta impeccably every time, follow these simple steps:
Cook pasta in plenty of boiling, generously salted water, until al dente.
Make sure your sauce is heated through and ready to go.
Drain the cooked noodles in a colander set in the sink, taking care to reserve some of the cooking water (I use a heat-proof pyrex measuring cup that I set right in the sink).
Do not rinse the pasta.
Return the drained pasta to the pot and immediately spoon some ~ but not all ~ of the sauce over the noodles. Use a large serving fork or a pasta fork to toss the noodles with the sauce. Add a splash or two of the starchy cooking water if necessary to loosen the sauce. Toss gently but thoroughly. The sauce should cloak the pasta like a clingy slip, not an overcoat.
Serve the pasta in individual shallow bowls or bring it to the table in a serving bowl. In either case, spoon a judicious amount of sauce on top, just enough to garnish it, and sprinkle with cheese ~ unless it's a seafood sauce, in which case, NO cheese.
For a brothy sauce, such as clam sauce, it is best to finish the pasta in the same pan as the sauce: Drain the pasta a minute or two before it is al dente, and then transfer it right into the pan with the sauce (obviously your pan should be large enough to hold both sauce and noodles). Let the pasta finish cooking in the sauce. Portion the pasta into individual bowls and spoon any remaining juices from the pan on top.
You’ll find my recipe for simple pantry tomato sauce, made with canned tomatoes, here. Now go forth and make yourself a nice dish of properly dressed pasta. Buon appetito.